[hackersgnahack]

Of course it had an impact. It's guaranteed to just be something that's not seen as 'sexy' internally, and therefore has probably had no-one championing it, and it gathered dust and finally... someone just wanted to kill the code.

I've seen it happen first hand in similar sized companies.

[yencabulator]

I'm quite convinced the motivations for both the creation and teardown of this donation program must have come from the money people, not from the techies. It must have been a tax write-off. Nothing else makes sense, knowing how strongly Amazon is a cost-cutting company.